Go-Go Marc, Cary On! An Indigenous Person Tells his Story

Phil wishes he was a musician (well, he is one, but he wishes he were a good one) but he's not frustrated by it. He's frustrated with a lot of other aspects of the so-called biz. Therefore, he's excited by independently released jazz.

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Published: May 27, 2004

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MC: These are Go-Go bands...or let's say Go-Go based bands. Because that's what's happenin' in DC. It's like Cuba—in Cuba it's exclusive and you can get the raw cats playin' the raw stuff. There's probably 1000 bands in Cuba. In DC, in that small area there's 100 to 150 bands...that work! That's a big industry down there. Anyway, my point is that I grew up with music, with instruments. It wasn't turntables and samplers and shit. I started my first band when I was twelve and that band stayed together until I was seventeen. It was called 'High Integrity Band and Show.' We graduated from cans and buckets to instruments. We won a lot of competitions. I was playing drums in that band .

AAJ: I was going to ask you about that.

MC: I found a better drummer-this cat named Ricky, so I went to the trumpet.

AAJ: What (laughs)?

MC: Yeah. My grandfather played trumpet so I always had one in my house. Pretty much every instrument was in my house. My mother had remarried and the man that she married was also into music, but he was a lawyer. He had just a wealth of records. I was in his records and I'd get whipped for it because there'd be scratches and I'd leave the turntable on. Remember the tube turntables? He had one of those. So he taught me how to deal with the stuff. My mother would play Duke Ellington, Cab, Eddie Palmierei. All kinds of stuff... records from Peru, Senegalese music and Native American stuff.

By the time I was 15 I went into a program, to kind of...it was a social program, to get people straight, basically. My parents felt like I was too much of a burden on myself, my siblings and them because I was into all types of shit that it wasn't healthy for a young person to be into...like gangs and stuff like that.

There, I met a man named Daniel Witt. I was playing drums and trumpet when I went in, but I was always curious about the piano because we had one in the house and I'd play around on it. He played the piano and he was incredible. He was the kind of person- he could walk into a room and tell you the electrical schematics of what's going on and write it down. The resistance and the Ohms and the wattage-everything. And he could do the same thing with music-he could hear a piece of music and write it out without even touching the piano. I was totally fascinated by this guy, and he took me under his wing. There was a Fender Rhodes there and I just played it continuously.

AAJ: Yeah, man. You play the Fender Rhodes alright!

MC: Well, that's what I learned to play on. There was a Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer there. I learned enough to go back...let me explain. By this time I'd been expelled from high school in the 9th grade and I didn't go back the next year. So the whole thing was to get me into shape to go back to school. I insisted on going back, not to get my GED. Daniel Witt got me prepared enough to audition for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts . I was accepted into the school after being out for two years. So I'm two years ahead of...well make that behind and ahead of, my classmates. When I went there man, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

This is after a year and a half of being in a program to supposedly rehabilitate myself, but what I used it for was to meet myself. I met myself there ..I didn't have my parents...I had nobody. I was the youngest person in this program... in the history of the program up to that point. People were like, "Man, what are you in here for?" It took me a while to realize what I was in there for. It was to learn who I am. The name of the program was RAP Incorporated Regional Addiction Prevention. It's a self-help program-basically the doors are open...it's not a gated program. I could have left but I wouldn't have been able to come back. I stayed man. I graduated and did my thing. I played at the White House. Just comin' outta there, I played the piano at the White House with the Navy Band. That's how intense I was . After a year and a half of the program, really only about six months after getting to the piano. That one year, I worked so hard I got it to a point where no one could tell when I had started playing. I started playing at sixteen and played at the White House before I was seventeen... "Satin Doll" man.

AAJ: Duke! You do that beautiful Duke thing on The Antidote.

MC: Melancholia. When I heard Duke play that on The Queen's Suite , I was like, "That's how I want to play." Duke was from DC too, so I when I went to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts I was just immersed. I had John Malachi (ed. note- accompanist to Sarah Vaughn, Billy Eckstine and Joe Williams, among others) as one of my coaches and teachers, a phenomenal accompanist as well as pianist. He had an incredible reach. He could actually reach the interval of a 13th in the left hand! These incredible wide intervals in the closed voices.

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